Time to slip off the Labor shackles, PM tells voters SARAH MARTIN THE AUSTRALIAN MARCH 10, 2014 12:00AM TONY Abbott says South Australia has been held back by 12 years of Labor, as he urges a switch to a Liberal government at Saturday’s state election. The Prime Minister said voters in South Australia and Tasmania had the opportunity this week to elect governments focused on job creation, which was “desperately” needed to address high unemployment in both states. In Adelaide to officially launch Opposition Leader Steven Marshall’s campaign, Mr Abbott said South Australia needed to “slip off the shackles” of a Labor government to reach its full potential. “That’s what I want to see here ... a government that is once more encouraging the people of South Australia to be everything that you can be, to achieve everything that you can achieve, and to slip off the shackles of regulation and pessimism and defeatism which have held this great state back for far too long,” he said. “I want to unleash the creativity and the productivity and the ingenuity of the people of South Australia.” He said projects such as BHP Billiton’s shelved $28 billion Olympic Dam mine expansion project needed to be nurtured to “get back on track”, hailing the Liberals’ plan to pursue a port development on the state’s west coast as a means to achieving this. Three former Liberal premiers - Dean Brown, John Olsen and Steele Hall - joined Mr Marshall at the campaign launch, which was held in his electorate of Dunstan at the Norwood Town Hall. Howard government minister and president of the party’s state branch Alexander Downer told those at the launch he was hopeful the “sun would rise” on a state Liberal government next Sunday. “The dark night of Labor will be over,” he said. Mr Marshall said the biggest problem in South Australia was the lack of jobs. “The problem has been created by the economic settings that Labor has delivered over their 12 years in government,” he said. “I love South Australia ... but it is not a great state if you do not have a job. It is time for a fresh start, it is time for a new beginning.” Mr Marshall, a 46-year-old, first-term MP, is the clear favourite to form government on Saturday. A series of polls shows Labor is lagging behind the Liberal Party, 46 per cent to 54 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis, suggesting a swing of at least 2.4 per cent since the 2010 state election. The former businessman, who has campaigned heavily on the state of the economy and the need for a focus on job-creation strategies and tax reform, announced yesterday the Liberals would increase payments for water and energy concessions and scrap the Save the River Murray levy to address cost-of-living concerns. He also saidthe Liberal Party would pursue building a port on the Eyre Peninsula as a key infrastructure priority to assist the resources sector. Premier Jay Weatherill said Mr Marshall had a “secret” plan to cut services and jobs and taxpayers would not be “one cent better off” under the Liberals.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 16:41:32 +0000
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